Here are a few observations about improving the current status of web
browsing in Squeak:
After looking through both Scamper and MediaView code, I think that
the best approach for coding an improved web browser natively in
Squeak would be to work directly on improving Scamper, and maybe use
elements of MediaView as a general guide to what might be done with
Scamper. Reference the discussion around
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-October/109903.html
For this approach, it would probably be useful to upgrade/replace the
HTTPSocket code with either the HTTPClient code or the Curl plugin
that have been talked about.
In my opinion, a better approach would be to build a plugin based on
Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, or
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XULRunner, or maybe even
http://ubrowser.com/ and probably requiring the VM changes that
Andreas Raab posted on this list a while ago for doing callbacks.
For the reasons outlined in my 3 Feb 2006 diary entry at
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/person/dfaught/, I will personally
not be doing anything at all with any of these approaches, so feel
free to explore this area. I am abandoning this particular project
because I have contributed very little to it outside of some research,
and feel that my time is better spent elsewhere.
Dave